makexvpics - create/update xv/zgv/Gimp-compatible thumbnails non-interactively.
Public domain by Russell Marks, 1998/1999.


Description
-----------

Makexvpics generates thumbnails for picture files (GIFs, JPEGs, etc.)
which are suitable for xv, zgv, and the Gimp. It's considerably slower
than any of those are at making them (in particular, updating a
mostly-up-to-date set of thumbnails is very much slower), but well, it
works. :-) Also, being primarily a shell script it's quite easy to add
support for additional formats.

Makexvpics arose through my being asked more than once to make zgv
update thumbnails from the command-line (without going into graphics
mode) somehow. Since it's fairly hairy having an svgalib program not
call svgalib's vga_init() sometimes, and since it's quite possible xv
(and now Gimp) users might want to be able to do something similar
without having to have zgv installed, I thought a separate program was
the best approach.


Requirements
------------

Makexvpics is a fairly simple shell script, and relies on various
other programs to do most of the work. In particular, you need these
things installed before makexvpics will work:

- netpbm (or pbmplus)
- djpeg		(for JPEG support)
- pngtopnm	(for PNG support)
- mrftopbm	(for mrf support)


Installation
------------

If you have my `pcx2ppm' program installed, you should uncomment the
USE_PCX2PPM definition in `makexvpics.sh'. (But this only makes any
difference when indexing PCX files, so most people won't need to care
about this either way. :-))

Then edit the Makefile if necessary (it shouldn't be), do `make', then
(as root) `make install'.

See the man page for details of how to use the program.


Share and enjoy!

-Rus.
